Mike Green said...
Great pictures. A mentor of mine worked at Princeton
as a graduate assistant in the lab where they had one of the early Williams
tube memory computers. His job was to sit there watching the bank of tubes
for a bloom in the phosphor indicating that there was a programming error
and there were repeated reads going on at a single location. If this happened,
he had to push the Stop button immediately. Usually this was due to forgetting
to increment the program counter (controlled by a bit in the instruction). Too
many successive reads to the same location would burn a hole in the
phosphor coating and that location would have some "stuck" bits from
then on. There was a map on the wall showing all such defects so programmers
could program around them.
Great recollections, Mike!
Seen below is a rare photo of the actual computer - IBM's first shipped in 1952
mass-produced stored program computer, the 701.
Instead of core memory, the 701 used Williams CRT memory. At the top
right in the back, you can see the Type 706 Williams Tube Memory unit
with 72 circular tubes!
You can probably imagine your mentor sitting there at the Princeton Lab,
watching the tubes for blooming.
simon said...
Time to get off the mushrooms humandoido - LOL
Just to set the record straight on the topic of smoking, I absolutely
do not smoke. As you know, Peter Jakacki has the monopoly on
mushroom smoking, as evidenced by the long mushrooming pipe
he hand crafted for that exact purpose. However... it is a little known secret
that on occasion most people in this interest area have indeed smoked
a board or two!
This is a photo of the IBM 360 computer programmed some years ago
using a TSR and a punch card machine. My computer program was so lengthy,
I had to carry the punched-card program around in a large shoebox.
The computer lab knew me well, it had something to do with running this program
because it printed resolution graphics, something relatively unusual at that time.
The code worked well in FORTRAN IV and led to the discovery of new math formulae,
a better climatology prediction system, optical glass light transmissive ray tracings,
and cometary orbital derivatives. Surprisingly, there was a lot that could be achieved
with these retro computers. If you worked on a very retro computer, let's hear
about it!
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 1/22/2010 9:31:16 AM GMT
Bonus project photos - the "retro" propeller chip seen here has eight completed
cogs, built from retro parts. Each cog is represented by one rack. Rack eight is
just outside the photo.
I really dislike tearing down any project, so as Ken Gracey recommends, we will save
each project and set it on the shelf when finished. We're either going to need lower
shelves or higher garage ceilings in the future.
In the end, it was not possible to ship the project to Parallax with the Toyota Runabout.
The sun-roof caved in during the mounting process so the computer was returned
to the garage.
Therefore, the Parallax team flew in to inspect the completed Propeller Cogs.
The three important dudes and dudette - Chip Gracey, Ken Gracey, and Jessica Uelmen
are wearing white lab coats because this is a clean sterile room (the same that NASA
has for constructing spacecraft). The other two in street clothes are Whit and Chris Savage
who did not follow proper clean-room procedures.
Above everyone's heads are the cables that connect together all the cogs. There's
enough wire run through snorkel tubes to lead from here to the Moon and back again.
Chris Savage said he could hang a lot of clothes wash out on that to dry if he could
find enough clothes pins.
Whit, second from the left, was heard saying, "The only hub 512 K Bites I can find are
near my lunch sack." Chris Savage was vociferously taking notes leading to the verge
of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in his... tongue.
Seen above, Chip and Ken are drawing up the final "Tongue in Cheek" award.
And here is the actual award.
And here is one last look at the retro Propeller chip built from retro parts (showing all eight retro cogs).
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 1/22/2010 12:01:39 PM GMT
In 1976 I watched them unload a new ICL 2960 from the trucks that delivered it to the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Lots of spectacularly huge bright orange cabinets.
Us students got to run our Algol programs from punched cards on that.
I was always being reprimanded for making heavy use of the pen plotter.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
For me, the past is not over yet.
heater said...
In 1976 I watched them unload a new ICL 2960
from the trucks that delivered it to the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Lots of spectacularly huge bright orange cabinets. Us students got to run
our Algol programs from punched cards on that. I was always being
reprimanded for making heavy use of the pen plotter.
heater, that's so cool! I noticed a sample punched card that you posted.
It looks familiar to the punched cards I used. Attached is a pic showing
three punched cards from one of my progression/regression programs
that was actually run on the IBM 360/50.
The top is a write formatting command card, middle is a numerical floating
point format, and the bottom is a regressional call involving X, Y, SIGMAY,
NPTS, NTERMS, M, MODE, YFIT, A0, A, AND SIGMA0 parameters. The
language is FORTRAN IV.
For many years, these cards were used in my Parallax book as important
book marks, and so they survived and go wherever my books travel.
The mercury delay lines sprouted from the floor and looked like very large grey mushrooms.
I seriously considered sitting on one as a joke and getting someone to take a photograph.
I remember some of the names of the people who were involved with it, and actually worked with one of them on the
new LEO III computer after English Electric took LEO over. I designed the audible monitor circuit for it which allowed
an engineer to listen to the CPU activity.
Leon
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Gee, I had some of ICL's (hideous) orange cabinet computers (the System Ten and Sytem 25 mini's) and the Singer System Ten (predecessor).
My fully operational Singer System Ten was 1975 vintage bought in 1977 and installed in my garage (airconditioned and all - and it was the length of my garage!).
110KB core memory and 3 x 10MB disk drives.
It was still fully operational and used until the end of 1999. Now if only I could find the photos.
My wife taught ICL 1900 operators and my mate was Australia's hardware specialist for the 2960's.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Links to other interesting threads:
Mike_GTN said...
Humanoido, Have you designed A Valve (or bottle) tester
using the Propeller Chip? Here is some real retro computing from 1969 http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8008.shtml
Love the commentary on the clip... Control we have a problem. Mike.
Mike- the web site is very interesting! No, I did not build a tube tester using
a prop chip. Sounds like a good project if you have lots of tubes that need
testing. At one time, all my ham radio projects used tubes, and I had a
small tube tester. At that time, you could buy a good one from Lafeyette
Electronics which is where I purchased most of what I needed for hobby
electronics.
When I was a kid, nearly every drugstore in town had a tube tester. These things had a zillion sockets on top, one or two clips for plate caps of various sizes, a couple rotary switches for configuration, a panel meter with good/bad zones, and a flip chart that showed the correct settings for the different part numbers. I don't think they actually measured gain, just basic cathode-to-plate conduction. That's all that was really necessary, though, as most tube problems were from burnt-out filaments. But, being just a kid, I felt like a real hot-shot when I could haul a load of tubes to the store, isolate the bad one, and fix the family's TV by replacing it.
Strangely enough that ICL 2960 mainframe at Kent University, which must have cost some millions, was housed in a building that collapsed.
See picture. The collapse was due to an old railway tunnel running underneath itself starting collapsing. The tunnel was later filled up with concrete.
Now that was a shame as it was a tunnel for the first passenger railway in the world that used to have Stevenson's Rocket II running on it.
I walked through that tunnel as a teenager, very dark an scary. In my mind the tunnel should have been preserved.
Gadgetman said...
BTW: Do NOT use the label 'MC Computer' unless it can top my
1989 vintage MC400 laptop.
The Psion Mobile Computer MC 400 is no longer manufactured
so I'm sure the name is up for grabs. Plus, to avoid confusion,
the new MC Propeller Computer has more to the full name.
That should prevent any confusion with other things named MC
like Master Charge cards. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
humanoido
Here's some interesting history to the 1989 vintage MC400 laptop.
BTW, the Propeller computer is nothing like it.
1. Battery life(8 x AA ) 60Hours+
Alternatively, 20Hours on a 7.2V 1AH Ni-cad pack.
(A 600mAH pack was also available. Incidentally, as the charger circuitry is in the pack itself, it's theoretically upgradeable to any technology. You could also plug the PSU directly into the battery, if you had a spare pack... )
2. A fully Pre-emptive OS(something MS had problems with using a Pentium... ) with a complete GUI. It actually handles Z-orders and will keep updating windows in the background. Not bad on a computer with a slow 80C86 with 256KB RAM...
3. The wordprocessor is fully WYSIWYG... So is the spreadsheet.
Together with the Agenda the same OS and SW was used on their later Series 3 organisers.
4. The touchpad is also 640x400 points, so it's a one-to-one match with the screen.
5. It uses Flash SSDs for file storage. These are not connected in a parallell fashion, but using a serial networking protocol. It can fit 4 of them at any time...
5.a. And they're hot-pluggable... Open a file on one, pop out the SSD, then try to save the file, and you'll get a polite message to reinsert the correct SSD.
6. did I mention instant on? Yes, really instant.
7. The 'sound recording' which never appeared was supposedly based on ISDN technology and was a module that was supposed to be slotted into a bay at the back. This slot also uses the same networking port as the SSDs... And the Serial/parallell module also fits into one of these bays. there's two of them)
There was a MC200 machine, too with 640x200 resolution...
We won't mention the menus at the top of the screen, which changes in a way similar to Mac OS...
And the DOS-based cludge known as the MC 600 is best left to rot in whatever hell is reserved for that kind of sh!t...
While the machine itself bombed, the technology lived on in the Series 3 PDA(0ne of the best PDA series ever), the HC and later WorkAbout handhelds
In fact, the greatest selling-point for the MC400 at the end was that it was file-compatible with the little S3...
Also, shame on you for not mentioning my languishing 'Magic Castle' sub-site dedicated to it. http://home.c2i.net/trygveh/mc400/index.html
(I really need to fix the errors, update facts and links and move it to my current site)
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Don't visit my new website...
Gadgetman: your information and web site are remarkable! The data about OPL
language is very interesting, both strengths and shortcomings, and interesting
to note the language was improved with subsequent models and has a large
following today.
From Wikipedia:
"The Open Programming Language (OPL) is an embedded programming language
for portable devices that run the Symbian Operating System, which can be found
on e.g. the Nokia 9200, 9300 and 9500 Communicator series mobile telephone/PDA
and the Sony Ericsson's P800, P900, P910 series. On classic Psion PDAs such as the
Series 3/5/5mx/Series 7 and netBook/netPad, as well as the MC218, OPL is part of
the standard application suite. OPL is also included in Psion Teklogix industrial
handhelds such as the Workabout mx. OPL is an interpreted language similar to
BASIC. A fully Visual Basic-compatible language OVAL has been also developed.
The language was originally called Organiser Programming Language developed by
Psion Ltd for the Psion Organiser. The first implementation (without graphics) was
for the original Psion Organiser (now referred to as the Psion Organiser I, 1984) and
came bundled with the Science, Finance and Math datapaks. It became truly accessible
as built in software in the Psion Organiser II (1986) and the language went on to be
used in the Psion Series 3 and later. After Psion retired from the PDA market, the
project was changed to open source and the acronym was re-interpreted. The language
is now developed on SourceForge in the opl-dev project."
It's a very nifty language; the entire main loop of a large application can be so small that it fits on a single A4 sheet, but still handle all system events and whatnot.
Another thing that's interesting about OPL is that in its second incarnation(on the organiser II) it was very easy to blend in assembly code.
(This disappeared on later editions where one was instead encouraged to create dynamically linked libraries in C)
It's a nifty language, I made an application for reading/programming DalSemi 'Thermochron' iButtons, several apps for reading assorted PalmPilot files, and on the Org II I combined it with assembly and a couple of ICs to make a bike computer.
Also, that list of computers and phones is not correct as some of those phones doesn't have the OPL runtime built-in. It's just that it's possible to add it afterwards.
And some are missing altogether from the list; GeoFox One, Oregon Scientific Osaris comes to mind.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Don't visit my new website...
Folks, some time has passed since my previous post about the new Propeller-driven MC computer. There were many
people requesting a drawing of the complete system. I am now proud to say the drawing is complete and posted below,
after a month of arduous penciling on the back side of 40 dietary restaurant napkins which were skotch-taped together.
While I never drew up a complete schematic, this pictorial can be used as a wiring guide for those willing to create their
own project versions.
As you can see, this is the distributed computer version, i.e. the computer is distributed into other rooms.
Fortunately, there are now several somewhat coerced neighbors that "volunteered" the space in their apartments
to hold the distributed computer sections as my lab room was too small to contain everything. You can see my
lab room in the forefront of the drawing. This distributed technique has worked fine, for the first week, then some
debugging disaster - one neighbor has some drunk house cats that got into a bottle of New Year's Skotch and
then chewed through the relay wires and it was a real mess to repair. The rush is to get everything back on
track before the new terminals arrive.
I'm very happy to report that the first batch of new
terminals has arrived. The photo shows the unboxed
units strewn around in the control room. As of yet,
there are no hookup instructions. These units were
shipped without manuals. It's ok, Blue'n'old Company
tech support told us to simply guess when connecting
each unit's 100+ wires.
Phil said...
That's this selfsame thread! Ow! The recursion is making my head ache!
-Phil
Phil:
Congrats! U were the only person to catch the pun.
Recursive AND "RETRO." That's the idea!
Maybe u have a double headache now... LOL!
But Phil, c'mon, I thought at least you would
have the common courtesy to say your head
"SPINs." [noparse]:)[/noparse]))
For dudes who missed it the first time, here it
is the second time. hehe...
If I recall, the place now has one of the fastest modern supercomputers in the world. Single digits, as far as rank in speed, this was last year mind you.
By far the best tour I've ever done, better than a day on a nuclear aircraft carrier in the Atlantic, complete with takeoffs, landings, supersonic flybys, etc.
Comments
Seen below is a rare photo of the actual computer - IBM's first shipped in 1952
mass-produced stored program computer, the 701.
Instead of core memory, the 701 used Williams CRT memory. At the top
right in the back, you can see the Type 706 Williams Tube Memory unit
with 72 circular tubes!
You can probably imagine your mentor sitting there at the Princeton Lab,
watching the tubes for blooming.
humanoido
do not smoke. As you know, Peter Jakacki has the monopoly on
mushroom smoking, as evidenced by the long mushrooming pipe
he hand crafted for that exact purpose. However... it is a little known secret
that on occasion most people in this interest area have indeed smoked
a board or two!
humanoido
using a TSR and a punch card machine. My computer program was so lengthy,
I had to carry the punched-card program around in a large shoebox.
The computer lab knew me well, it had something to do with running this program
because it printed resolution graphics, something relatively unusual at that time.
The code worked well in FORTRAN IV and led to the discovery of new math formulae,
a better climatology prediction system, optical glass light transmissive ray tracings,
and cometary orbital derivatives. Surprisingly, there was a lot that could be achieved
with these retro computers. If you worked on a very retro computer, let's hear
about it!
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 1/22/2010 9:31:16 AM GMT
Bonus project photos - the "retro" propeller chip seen here has eight completed
cogs, built from retro parts. Each cog is represented by one rack. Rack eight is
just outside the photo.
I really dislike tearing down any project, so as Ken Gracey recommends, we will save
each project and set it on the shelf when finished. We're either going to need lower
shelves or higher garage ceilings in the future.
In the end, it was not possible to ship the project to Parallax with the Toyota Runabout.
The sun-roof caved in during the mounting process so the computer was returned
to the garage.
Therefore, the Parallax team flew in to inspect the completed Propeller Cogs.
The three important dudes and dudette - Chip Gracey, Ken Gracey, and Jessica Uelmen
are wearing white lab coats because this is a clean sterile room (the same that NASA
has for constructing spacecraft). The other two in street clothes are Whit and Chris Savage
who did not follow proper clean-room procedures.
Above everyone's heads are the cables that connect together all the cogs. There's
enough wire run through snorkel tubes to lead from here to the Moon and back again.
Chris Savage said he could hang a lot of clothes wash out on that to dry if he could
find enough clothes pins.
Whit, second from the left, was heard saying, "The only hub 512 K Bites I can find are
near my lunch sack." Chris Savage was vociferously taking notes leading to the verge
of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in his... tongue.
Seen above, Chip and Ken are drawing up the final "Tongue in Cheek" award.
And here is the actual award.
And here is one last look at the retro Propeller chip built from retro parts (showing all eight retro cogs).
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 1/22/2010 12:01:39 PM GMT
Lots of spectacularly huge bright orange cabinets.
Us students got to run our Algol programs from punched cards on that.
I was always being reprimanded for making heavy use of the pen plotter.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
For me, the past is not over yet.
It looks familiar to the punched cards I used. Attached is a pic showing
three punched cards from one of my progression/regression programs
that was actually run on the IBM 360/50.
The top is a write formatting command card, middle is a numerical floating
point format, and the bottom is a regressional call involving X, Y, SIGMAY,
NPTS, NTERMS, M, MODE, YFIT, A0, A, AND SIGMA0 parameters. The
language is FORTRAN IV.
For many years, these cards were used in my Parallax book as important
book marks, and so they survived and go wherever my books travel.
humanoido
users.tpg.com.au/eedeuce/
This must have been the actual machine:
www.members.optusnet.com.au/deucepix/deucemk1.jpg
The mercury delay lines sprouted from the floor and looked like very large grey mushrooms.
I seriously considered sitting on one as a joke and getting someone to take a photograph.
I remember some of the names of the people who were involved with it, and actually worked with one of them on the
new LEO III computer after English Electric took LEO over. I designed the audible monitor circuit for it which allowed
an engineer to listen to the CPU activity.
Leon
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Post Edited (Leon) : 1/22/2010 12:48:23 PM GMT
My fully operational Singer System Ten was 1975 vintage bought in 1977 and installed in my garage (airconditioned and all - and it was the length of my garage!).
110KB core memory and 3 x 10MB disk drives.
It was still fully operational and used until the end of 1999. Now if only I could find the photos.
My wife taught ICL 1900 operators and my mate was Australia's hardware specialist for the 2960's.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
Have you designed A Valve (or bottle) tester using the Propeller Chip?
Here is some real retro computing from 1969 http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8008.shtml
Love the commentary on the clip... Control we have a problem.
Mike.
a prop chip. Sounds like a good project if you have lots of tubes that need
testing. At one time, all my ham radio projects used tubes, and I had a
small tube tester. At that time, you could buy a good one from Lafeyette
Electronics which is where I purchased most of what I needed for hobby
electronics.
humanoido
-Phil
See picture. The collapse was due to an old railway tunnel running underneath itself starting collapsing. The tunnel was later filled up with concrete.
Now that was a shame as it was a tunnel for the first passenger railway in the world that used to have Stevenson's Rocket II running on it.
I walked through that tunnel as a teenager, very dark an scary. In my mind the tunnel should have been preserved.
www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=14721
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
For me, the past is not over yet.
It was the Trogladites evolving into Ludites.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
humanoido
so I'm sure the name is up for grabs. Plus, to avoid confusion,
the new MC Propeller Computer has more to the full name.
That should prevent any confusion with other things named MC
like Master Charge cards. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
humanoido
Here's some interesting history to the 1989 vintage MC400 laptop.
BTW, the Propeller computer is nothing like it.
www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi-bin/sitewise.pl?act=det&p=2801
www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/1776/Latest-Additions/
Post Edited (humanoido) : 1/27/2010 2:40:41 PM GMT
1. Battery life(8 x AA ) 60Hours+
Alternatively, 20Hours on a 7.2V 1AH Ni-cad pack.
(A 600mAH pack was also available. Incidentally, as the charger circuitry is in the pack itself, it's theoretically upgradeable to any technology. You could also plug the PSU directly into the battery, if you had a spare pack... )
2. A fully Pre-emptive OS(something MS had problems with using a Pentium... ) with a complete GUI. It actually handles Z-orders and will keep updating windows in the background. Not bad on a computer with a slow 80C86 with 256KB RAM...
3. The wordprocessor is fully WYSIWYG... So is the spreadsheet.
Together with the Agenda the same OS and SW was used on their later Series 3 organisers.
4. The touchpad is also 640x400 points, so it's a one-to-one match with the screen.
5. It uses Flash SSDs for file storage. These are not connected in a parallell fashion, but using a serial networking protocol. It can fit 4 of them at any time...
5.a. And they're hot-pluggable... Open a file on one, pop out the SSD, then try to save the file, and you'll get a polite message to reinsert the correct SSD.
6. did I mention instant on? Yes, really instant.
7. The 'sound recording' which never appeared was supposedly based on ISDN technology and was a module that was supposed to be slotted into a bay at the back. This slot also uses the same networking port as the SSDs... And the Serial/parallell module also fits into one of these bays. there's two of them)
There was a MC200 machine, too with 640x200 resolution...
We won't mention the menus at the top of the screen, which changes in a way similar to Mac OS...
And the DOS-based cludge known as the MC 600 is best left to rot in whatever hell is reserved for that kind of sh!t...
While the machine itself bombed, the technology lived on in the Series 3 PDA(0ne of the best PDA series ever), the HC and later WorkAbout handhelds
In fact, the greatest selling-point for the MC400 at the end was that it was file-compatible with the little S3...
Also, shame on you for not mentioning my languishing 'Magic Castle' sub-site dedicated to it.
http://home.c2i.net/trygveh/mc400/index.html
(I really need to fix the errors, update facts and links and move it to my current site)
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Don't visit my new website...
language is very interesting, both strengths and shortcomings, and interesting
to note the language was improved with subsequent models and has a large
following today.
From Wikipedia:
"The Open Programming Language (OPL) is an embedded programming language
for portable devices that run the Symbian Operating System, which can be found
on e.g. the Nokia 9200, 9300 and 9500 Communicator series mobile telephone/PDA
and the Sony Ericsson's P800, P900, P910 series. On classic Psion PDAs such as the
Series 3/5/5mx/Series 7 and netBook/netPad, as well as the MC218, OPL is part of
the standard application suite. OPL is also included in Psion Teklogix industrial
handhelds such as the Workabout mx. OPL is an interpreted language similar to
BASIC. A fully Visual Basic-compatible language OVAL has been also developed.
The language was originally called Organiser Programming Language developed by
Psion Ltd for the Psion Organiser. The first implementation (without graphics) was
for the original Psion Organiser (now referred to as the Psion Organiser I, 1984) and
came bundled with the Science, Finance and Math datapaks. It became truly accessible
as built in software in the Psion Organiser II (1986) and the language went on to be
used in the Psion Series 3 and later. After Psion retired from the PDA market, the
project was changed to open source and the acronym was re-interpreted. The language
is now developed on SourceForge in the opl-dev project."
OPL is now open souce, found here: opl-dev.sourceforge.net/
According to the The Ultimate List of Propeller Chip Languages
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=809630
the language has no Propeller version at this time.
There is a book written "by the developer of OPL"
mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3899
The OPL Optimization Programming Language, Pascal Van Hentenryck
humanoido
Another thing that's interesting about OPL is that in its second incarnation(on the organiser II) it was very easy to blend in assembly code.
(This disappeared on later editions where one was instead encouraged to create dynamically linked libraries in C)
It's a nifty language, I made an application for reading/programming DalSemi 'Thermochron' iButtons, several apps for reading assorted PalmPilot files, and on the Org II I combined it with assembly and a couple of ICs to make a bike computer.
Also, that list of computers and phones is not correct as some of those phones doesn't have the OPL runtime built-in. It's just that it's possible to add it afterwards.
And some are missing altogether from the list; GeoFox One, Oregon Scientific Osaris comes to mind.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Don't visit my new website...
people requesting a drawing of the complete system. I am now proud to say the drawing is complete and posted below,
after a month of arduous penciling on the back side of 40 dietary restaurant napkins which were skotch-taped together.
While I never drew up a complete schematic, this pictorial can be used as a wiring guide for those willing to create their
own project versions.
As you can see, this is the distributed computer version, i.e. the computer is distributed into other rooms.
Fortunately, there are now several somewhat coerced neighbors that "volunteered" the space in their apartments
to hold the distributed computer sections as my lab room was too small to contain everything. You can see my
lab room in the forefront of the drawing. This distributed technique has worked fine, for the first week, then some
debugging disaster - one neighbor has some drunk house cats that got into a bottle of New Year's Skotch and
then chewed through the relay wires and it was a real mess to repair. The rush is to get everything back on
track before the new terminals arrive.
For more information on my retro computer project, consult this thread.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=870799
humanoido
terminals has arrived. The photo shows the unboxed
units strewn around in the control room. As of yet,
there are no hookup instructions. These units were
shipped without manuals. It's ok, Blue'n'old Company
tech support told us to simply guess when connecting
each unit's 100+ wires.
humanoido
-Phil
Congrats! U were the only person to catch the pun.
Recursive AND "RETRO." That's the idea!
Maybe u have a double headache now... LOL!
But Phil, c'mon, I thought at least you would
have the common courtesy to say your head
"SPINs." [noparse]:)[/noparse]))
For dudes who missed it the first time, here it
is the second time. hehe... Post Edited (humanoido) : 2/15/2010 8:43:29 AM GMT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-12_National_Security_Complex
If I recall, the place now has one of the fastest modern supercomputers in the world. Single digits, as far as rank in speed, this was last year mind you.
By far the best tour I've ever done, better than a day on a nuclear aircraft carrier in the Atlantic, complete with takeoffs, landings, supersonic flybys, etc.